My Nareshkeit: A Blog of General Interesthttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com
Mitchell Plitnick's personal blog, a window into my daily thoughts. Be afraid...be very afraidFri, 18 Aug 2017 02:59:08 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngMy Nareshkeit: A Blog of General Interesthttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com
NFL, Giants Show They Don’t Care About Domestic Violencehttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2016/10/21/nfl-giants-show-they-dont-care-about-domestic-violence/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2016/10/21/nfl-giants-show-they-dont-care-about-domestic-violence/#respondSat, 22 Oct 2016 00:18:07 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=57]]>Being a football fan and a feminist may not be mutually exclusive, but the two don’t go easily together. American Football is as testosterone-driven a sport as there is. While watching the games, whether at stadiums or sports bars, one can often see some of the worst excesses of male behavior.

Few are naïve enough to think that the National Football League is ever going to honestly give a damn about the domestic violence that has plagued it. Every time the issue has come up, it has been all about covering it up and, failing that, doing damage control. I don’t expect that to change.

Woman abuser Josh Brown

But the latest ugly incident of domestic violence involving an NFL player has exposed the core of indifference to the issue in the league, and has also hit me personally because my team is the one acting in a most shameful manner.

Josh Brown, the kicker for my very own New York Giants confessed, in documents released earlier this week, to very serious and numerous incidents of domestic violence. He has now, finally, been placed on the commissioner’s exempt list. That means he is still collecting his salary until the league decides what to do with him. Given their shameful response to the matter thus far, that is probably enough for the Giants to wash their hands of the matter.

But let’s not let either the NFL or the Giants off the hook that easily. They have both acted horribly throughout from the beginning and continue to do so. The NFL has shown that they have learned nothing from the Ray Rice incident or any of the far too numerous cases of abuse of women involving NFL players. And the Giants, for their part, have made it clear that, if John Mara has not betrayed the dignity that characterized his family’s reputation in running this team through the years, then perhaps that reputation was never deserved in the first place.

Brown was arrested for domestic on May 22, 2015. Eventually, the charges were dropped. That’s not unusual, of course, in domestic violence cases. Earlier this year, Brown was mysteriously suspended for one game by the NFL, and it was only then that his arrest in 2015 was made public. The league claimed that they could not speak to Molly, who was, by that time, Brown’s ex-wife (and I don’t know what her last name is now, or whether it’s still Brown, hence I only use her first) nor get information from the police. So, they were only suspending Brown for one game. The Giants, from ownership to the head coach to the quarterback, all stood by Brown.

The implication, of course, was that they presumed Brown’s general innocence, that this was a one-time incident where tempers flared. Even aside from the fact that even one incident of domestic violence is one too many, that’s an inadequate explanation in and of itself; in 2014, in the wake of the Ray Rice assault case, the NFL sent the following letter to all the teams: “Effective immediately, violations of the Personal Conduct Policy regarding assault, battery, domestic violence or sexual assault that involve physical force, will be subject to a suspension without pay of six games for a first offense, with consideration given to mitigating factors as well as a longer suspension when circumstances warrant.” Obviously, they didn’t follow that policy in Brown’s case. He got one game.

The Giants come off no better. When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell put John Mara, along with Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney, in charge of overseeing the FBI’s investigation of the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice case, Mara said, “Many of us were dissatisfied with the original two-game suspension of Ray Rice. The commissioner took responsibility for that in his Aug. 28th memo to the owners when he stated, ‘I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.’ He then took appropriate steps to address this matter.”

Mara didn’t do better when it was up to him. Despite being aware of the charges against Brown, he signed the kicker to a two-year deal worth $4 million. This is a kicker, and, unlike other players, they are easily replaced. Yet Mara went forward.

Can that decision be excused by the possibility that this was a one-time lapse of temper by Brown? Even if one accepts such reasoning, and I absolutely do not, it is simply not true that the Giants believed this was a one-time incident. While they may have been unaware that there was a pattern of spousal abuse by Brown since 2009, they knew this was not a one-time incident. How? Because of an incident at the Pro Bowl earlier this year, well before the Giants re-signed Brown. The kicker was drunk and tried to break into his wife’s room (they were staying in separate rooms, which says a lot in and of itself). Earlier in the day, he was verbally abusive to her and took her phone to inspect her texts. Eventually, NFL and hotel security dragged Brown away and moved his estranged wife and her children, one of whom was Brown’s own child, who were in the room with her at the time to a new room.

So let’s cut out the nonsense that the Giants or the NFL thought Brown’s arrest was an anomaly. They knew this man was an abuser and they didn’t care.

Maybe, one might argue, they knew Brown had issues, but they were trying to support him in therapy and get him to work through his problems. After all, one could argue, if he’s really working and making progress on his issues, taking his livelihood away from him is likely to be counterproductive.

Again, that’s a weak line of argument. If that’s how things are being approached, he should still have faced the full six game suspension Goodell committed to. Moreover, the Giants needed to say that this was their approach in their words of support for Brown back in August to avoid the appearance of condoning domestic violence. But none of that happened.

And here matters get even worse. After Brown got the one-game suspension that was widely condemned as too light, this was his response: “I’m not going to go into detail about anything. My major concern is my three kids and the things that are put out there and the things that are being said. This moment happened over a year ago. The case was dropped five days after the moment happened. We’ve moved on with our lives at this point. While I’m not OK with the decision, I have to respect it. So I look forward to a 15-game season and moving forward with my teammates.”

Does that sound to you like a man who realizes he did something wrong? No, it’s more like a man who felt that getting a much lighter sentence than he supposed to was still an injustice done to him! And he was supported in this by his teammates and team.

Jason Pierre-Paul was asked in August if Brown should be cut. “No,” he said. “Why should we cut him? Every guy needs a chance.”

Justin Pugh had this to say: “Obviously, it’s a sad situation he’s been going through, and obviously, you have to be there for your team teammate. It’s definitely something that is tough. I don’t want to get too into it because I don’t know all the details either. So that is something that — I know Josh has spoken with everybody and settled that — but all we can do is support our teammate and make sure we’re there for him. It’s definitely a tough thing to go through.”

After Brown came back from his week off, quarterback Eli Manning said “I’m glad to have Josh back. Support him and support your teammates through everything that goes on. Good to have him back on the team and kicking for us this week. Just saw him and said, ‘hey, good to have you back.’ That’s about it. Move on.” Given some of the things Eli’s father and brother have been accused of, I guess he has a good deal of practice with that.

Head Coach Ben McAdoo said “I do support Josh as a man, a father, and a player.”

Now, with the allegations out, little has changed. On WFAN yesterday, I listened as Giants owner John Mara continued to double-talk about this, with his “waiting until we have all the facts” nonsense. But when host Mike Francesa asked if, given what we now know, Mara felt hoodwinked by Brown, Mara wasted not one heartbeat before saying firmly, “Absolutely not.” So, Mara seems to have known plenty before. He just didn’t care, because, after all, it was just some woman and one who was already divorcing his player.

Keep in mind, this is a player who has not shown the briefest glimpse of remorse or the slightest indication that he ever did anything wrong. Getting 1/6 of the penalty he was supposed to get for this horrific crime was deemed an injustice by him.

Nothing has changed in the NFL. And the ironic part is, in the end, Josh Brown is probably the worse off for it. Had the league done the right thing in the first place and waited until the police investigation was closed and these documents released, then given him the full six game suspension that Goodell had committed to, there’s every chance Brown could have made a public apology, served his suspension and been, albeit grudgingly by some like me, given a second chance, having paid a price for his crime.

Instead, Brown’s career is almost certainly over. The Giants have moved on with Robbie Gould. But justice has not been served. Nothing has changed. No message was sent. The NFL still thinks that as long as they put some pink shoes on the players a few times a year and turn one or two of their TV ads into pathetic and self-interested pandering to women they don’t need to address the culture of their sport which, from high school on up, is infused with a misogynistic disdain for women as anything other than sex toys.

And the Giants? Their image as a class organization has weathered some hits over the years, but most of the scandals associated with players on their team occurred after those players had left (Lawrence Taylor, Dave Meggett, Mark Ingram) or caused their departure (Plaxico Burress). This was an instance of the Giants coddling and, one could argue, even condoning spousal abuse. This will forever tarnish the team’s image.

And me? I’ll still root for the Giants on Sunday. But it will be less enthusiastic than it has been in the past, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to support this team the way I have in the past. I can tell you, I will never again purchase a piece of Giants merchandise until the Mara family sells the team, and that probably does indeed mean never.

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2016/10/21/nfl-giants-show-they-dont-care-about-domestic-violence/feed/0plitnickmWoman abuser Josh Brownlive_and_learn_staff_pose_with_a_stop_violence_against_women_sign-_10708149455The Death of David Bowiehttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/the-death-of-david-bowie/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/the-death-of-david-bowie/#respondMon, 11 Jan 2016 09:17:59 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=52]]>By now, most of you will have heard of the passing of David Bowie.

I write this as I sob uncontrollably for the death of a man I never met. But through his music and some other parts of his public persona, he had the single greatest effect on my life, on my spirit, and on my sense of self of any person outside of a very few family members and close friends.

I first fell in love with Bowie at the age of only nine years old, in 1976. I listened to his recently released compilation album, ChangesOneBowie. I was captivated by Space Oddity, and my interest held through several more songs. But it was Suffragette City that really caught my nine-year old heart. I bought the album the very next day. By the time ‘Heroes’ came out, in late 1977, I already had all his albums to date. I didn’t have any idea what to make of Low or of ‘Heroes’ but I would learn, and eventually recognize them for the incredible works of genius they were.

It would be about a decade before I would see him in concert. In 1980, just short of my fourteenth birthday, I did get to see him live as he performed the lead role in the Broadway production of The Elephant Man. My first Broadway show, too. Shortly after, I wrote him a fan letter and he rewarded me with a thank you note and a hand-signed photograph. Needless to say, I was on cloud nine.

By the time Scary Monsters (and Supercreeps) came out, that same year, I had matured enough to recognize the Berlin trilogy (Low, ‘Heroes’ and Lodger, the trilogy Bowie produced with Brian Eno) for what it was. Now, with this new album, I was ready to fully appreciate it. And while video for Ashes to Ashes might look primitive today, in 1980 it was like nothing I had ever seen.

He, more than anyone, inspired me to learn to play music, to love being on a stage, to approach music as art and to feel music deep in my heart. More than that, David Bowie opened my mind to a much larger world than I had been born into. He led me into ideas, philosophies, and thought I doubt I would have otherwise explored. His music and abstract lyrics made me consider the relationship of art to the artist as distinct from the consumer of art, and thus to begin to contemplate perception and how different it is for every individual.

How ironic, then, that after lampooning fashion in the song of the same name on Scary Monsters, Bowie would turn his back on abstraction, on complex, experimental or adventurous music. I supposed at the time that he was entitled to get back to making big bucks and to show the world that he could make better pop drivel than anyone else. But it came with extra baggage and, even worse, it lasted for most of the 1980s.

As with any great love, there were times of tribulation for me with Bowie. His dive into pop vapidity with Let’s Dance, and especially with the execrable and ironically titled Never Let Me Down came to symbolize the 80s for me as a decade when music lost its creativity and even those who, in the previous decade, had reached for the highest star to make music unlike any that had been heard before were now simply printing out the pop moneymakers. Bowie wasn’t alone for me. Many of the progressive rock musicians of the previous decade were doing the same. And I had no delusions about Bowie cashing in on his art. Ziggy Stardust had been a marvelous fusion of art, rock, and marketing. He created a show on and off stage that was at once creative and groundbreaking and also commercial. In different ways, his subsequent records until the Berlin trilogy were that also. An artist is entitled to make as much as he or she can off their art, and no one should begrudge them this. But the three albums in the 80s (Tonight, the second one, was a slight exception, with a bit more adventure on it than the other two, but only a bit) were the same sound a thousand other singers were putting out.

With Never Let Me Down, Bowie bottomed out, with an album that didn’t sell very well, got universally panned and seemed to convince him to finally reinvent himself again. Tin Machine was his foray into being in an actual band. Lead guitar player Reeves Gabrels began a long association with Bowie there and, while the band’s two studio and one live albums were not great, they represented Bowie’s return to creativity. There were some real gems there, like Under the God and Shopping for Girls. The lyrics had a lot more direct social commentary than was usual for Bowie and, best of all, Tin Machine played small clubs, and so I got to see a show where I was literally standing inches from Bowie. By 1994, when he again teamed with Eno for the brilliant 1.Outside, Bowie was back, and never really left again.

But the tribulations for me with Bowie were most acute in sifting through some of his early, quite Nietzchean lyrics and, the most pointed, in the 1980s when he said that his claim of being bisexual was just a ruse or a phase (which he retracted again in his later years). David Bowie’s persona helped me to accept my own sexuality, something I struggled with in my youth, as so many people have. Years later, I published this piece, the only time I ever really published an article about Bowie and which, I am proud to say, has been republished in an anthology of writing by bisexual men. I think if you read it, it will help demonstrate just how much impact and in how many different ways David Bowie affected my life and those of others like me.

Bowie’s artistic journey was unlike any other artist I am aware of in its multi-faceted ways. He was sometimes one to redefine genres that others had already made gold out of, as he did with Young Americans. But he was at his best when breaking new ground, as he did with Eno on Low, ‘Heroes’ and Lodger, three records the critics all hated at the time (as did the public for the most part) and later were recognized for the genius they were.

Wherever we go after this, I hope it is a place where David Bowie’s creativity can continue to flourish. Rest in peace, David, and we’ll keep Ziggy, the Thin White Duke, Nathan Adler, the Blackstar preacher and all the other characters and personae alive down here. There are generations for you to still fascinate.

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/the-death-of-david-bowie/feed/0plitnickmDon’t Make a Hero of Snowden — Yethttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-a-hero-of-snowden-yet/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-a-hero-of-snowden-yet/#commentsWed, 12 Jun 2013 06:40:39 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=45]]>Edward Snowden must not be made a hero! That probably comes as a surprise to anyone who read my previous two pieces on PRISM,

This guy gets it

but it’s a genuine concern. The question of Snowden as hero or traitor threatens to derail the much more important conversation that we need to have in the United States.

Bipartisan attacks on Snowden are already being leveled. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Bill Nelson, both Democrats, and the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner have all called Snowden a traitor. Others are praising him as a hero. And, as the go-to newspaper for lobbyists, POLITICO has already pointed out, the debate itself is precisely what President Obama wants. While we debate the pros and cons of Ed Snowden, we’re not discussing PRISM.

Snowden, of course, did a courageous thing. He threw away a very highly paid job because he couldn’t stomach what he was doing. He could have simply quit, but he thought it was important that people know about this program. If we have some real reform that stops the US government from spying on innocent citizens, here and around the world, or at least stops them from doing it on such a huge scale, we can stop and give him the honor he deserves.

But right now, Ed Snowden is a distraction. Yes, we should call for his protection, but entering the “traitor vs. hero” debate is defeating the purpose of what he did.

That’s not to say that there isn’t another conversation that needs to happen about Snowden. Whistleblowers have always been a point

These two are missing the point

of controversy, and for all his liberal talk about transparency, Barack Obama has been more hostile to them than many of his predecessors.

It’s also true that going forward we need to clarify how we assess people like Snowden, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Mark Feltand other notable whistleblowers. Felt, who was the informant known as Deep Throat that gave Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward the information they needed to expose Richard Nixon’s criminal behavior is now generally regarded as a hero. Manning and Assange face imprisonment for the rest of their lives. That says a lot about the extent to which Americans have become much more cowardly and willing to allow our government to strip away our freedoms in order to “protect us from terrorists.”

In its infancy, the Israel Defense Forces had a rule called “Degel Shakhor” or black flag. It meant that soldiers should not carry out orders that were clearly immoral. The intent was that “I was just following orders” was not supposed to be a legitimate excuse for major human rights violations. It was seldom used, in that army or any other, of course. But the idea is a very good one, and should be the lesson we draw from not accepting the “following orders” excuse from the Nazis. Those who believe that Snowden or Manning, by assuming their roles as NSA analyst and solider, respectively, should not have revealed the horrifying things they did should take a lesson.

But that’s a different conversation, one to be had when there isn’t an issue this weighty pending. Right now, we still see no one in the streets calling for our government to let private lives be private. That is supposed to be a basic principle in the US, one which transcends political differences. But such principles fail when we live in fear.

We cannot allow the media or the Congress divert this conversation into whether or not Snowden had a right to do what he did. The conversation needs to center on the crimes our government has committed. And crimes they are, whether or not our cooperative Congress permitted laws to be passed to justify the unjustifiable.

That’s why, for now, we cannot concern ourselves with crowning Edward Snowden a hero. Let’s instead make his actions worthwhile.

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-a-hero-of-snowden-yet/feed/1plitnickmThis guy gets itThese two are missing the pointStar Trek: Into Darkness: A Fun Film That Could Have Been So Much Morehttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/star-trek-into-darkness-a-fun-film-that-could-have-been-so-much-more/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/star-trek-into-darkness-a-fun-film-that-could-have-been-so-much-more/#commentsMon, 20 May 2013 00:04:08 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=39]]>The release of a new Star Trek movie is my opportunity to geek out. I started watching Star Trek when I was just three years old, so I’ve been following it for 43 years, through TV series, movies, books, games of all sorts and way more trinkets, clothing and paraphernalia purchased than I care to admit. That should establish my street cred for this review of Star Trek: Into Darkness.

WARNING: THIS IS A FULL SPOILER REVIEW. IF YOU STILL HAVEN’T SEEN “INTO DARKNESS,” AND YOU INTEND TO, THEN STOP READING THIS NOW!!!

Let me start by saying ST:ID was a lot of fun and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie. The special effects were spectacular, the action kept going, the movie was well-paced and even some of the more obviously “suspend your disbelief” stunts felt acceptable. But in the end, this movie missed an opportunity to be a truly great sci-fi adventure film, and it accentuated both the strengths and the weaknesses of JJ Abrams’ first Star Trek movie, while falling badly into some traps Abrams’ first effort generally avoided.

I’ll start with issues that don’t have to do with Trek continuity. The threat in this movie is not, ultimately, the revamped Khan Noonien Singh (a lot more on the revamping later), but the attempt by a powerful Starfleet admiral to change the fleet from one whose primary purpose is exploration, and only secondarily defense, to a mighty military force.

Where to start with the problems with that? First of all, it’s been done, and more than once. It was first covered in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where Admiral Cartwright conspires to prevent peace with the Klingons, then in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Pegasus, where another admiral tried to break a treaty the Federation had signed in order to produce forbidden military technology. Most clearly it was covered in Deep Space Nine, in the two episodes Paradise Lost and Homefront, where yet another admiral attempts to impose martial law on Earth.

I tell ya, Starfleet needs serious help in evaluating who its admirals should be.

In fact, the whole threat seems poorly designed. Peter Weller (whose shoddy, campy performance sticks out like a sore thumb among the rest of the cast, which generally performs admirably) plays Admiral Alexander Marcus, who is apparently very freaked out by the destruction of Vulcan and the growing military threat represented by the Klingon Empire. So, he decides to unfreeze Khan, who has been discovered earlier than in the original timeline, and hold the rest of Khan’s people hostage so he can force Khan to help him design a new Dreadnought-class starship. The new ship is a military powerhouse and the apparent crown jewel of new weaponry for a Federation gearing up for war. It’s also a nod to serious old-time ST geeks, who saw, in the very first Star Fleet Technical Manual ever published (way back in the ’70s) the plans for a Dreadnought class ship. It was expanded on in some games, as well. The old board game types, remember those? No, I thought not. Damn, I’m old.

Anyway, Khan explains that Marcus needed the 20th century genetically enhanced savagery that he possessed. In what way does that help? I mean, it’s not like Federation scientists didn’t know how to build phasers and photon torpedoes. In fact, nothing about the Dreadnought-class USS Vengeance seems like anything more than a really powerful starship. It is bigger, stronger and faster than the Enterprise, but that’s it. There’s no visible result that required Khan, who surely could not help with any technology, since, having been frozen in the mid-1990s, he’d be as lost as an 18th-century engineer would be in trying to design a new smartphone, no matter how smart his genetically-enhanced mind may be.

That whole plot line made no sense at all. Nor did Khan’s motivation. His plan to free his crew hardly seems the stuff of a genetically enhanced genius. Just start blowing shit up so that Marcus would hand over the rest of his crew, in Klingon space, no less? You’d think he’d come up with a plan that had a lot less potential to go wrong.

Plot oddities abounded from the start. Captain Kirk infiltrates a shrine and steals a holy document so the natives would chase him and give Spock an opportunity to defuse a volcano that would destroy the planet if it erupts. OK, but why does Kirk choose Dr. McCoy of all people to be with him? An even better question is why the Enterprise hides under water. Obviously, transporters are not working, but wouldn’t it make more sense to send down more than one shuttlecraft instead of the whole ship? I mean, I get the appeal of the Enterprise rising up out of the water. But it’s one thing for Kirk to play fast and loose with the Prime Directive for a greater good, even if it could get him fired. But when there’s an obvious alternative, that’s just bad, not to mention lazy, storytelling.

And then Kirk breaks the Prime Directive to save Spock’s life. And he doesn’t just break it, he shatters it, without a second thought for its meaning. OK, I get that this is a younger, much wilder, fatherless Kirk. But he’s still a Starfleet captain. I can see him doing what he did, but not trying to repair, or at least in some way mitigate the damage he’s done by making the Enterprise the new symbol of divinity on that planet? Seems odd.

Even odder is how lightly he gets off. This isn’t just an abstract rule he broke, this is Starfleet’s General Order Number One. Breaking that rule, at the very least, would have to mean being drummed out of Starfleet, no matter how much an influential admiral argued on Kirk’s behalf. It certainly does not mean a captain gets demoted to first officer where he’s next in line to get his ship back.

Before I get to the biggest problem, which will bring me back to Khan, I have to note the gratuitousness of two other scenes. Alice Eve’s Carol Marcus was largely an extraneous character in this film. She did contribute some things, but they could have just as easily been done by others. I don’t really have a problem with that, as it introduces Kirk’s love interest for future movies or a possible TV series. But the scene where she needlessly changes her clothes behind Kirk’s back, and where the camera, equally needlessly, needs to show her half-naked was as gratuitous a use of a woman’s body as you can get. I mean, really, if you want to show some skin, at least pretend to work it into the story. And, just by the way, some of us wouldn’t mind seeing Chris Pine in his skivvies as well, in the great Shatner tradition. I mean, if we’re going to be gratuitous, let’s at least demean males as well as females. Then it’s more prurient, less sexist.

And as much as I like to see Leonard Nimoy’s Spock Prime, there was, again, no good reason for his appearance in this movie. His conversation with his Abramsverse counterpart did nothing to advance the plot.

But all of this that I’ve listed thus far detracted from the movie only slightly. The biggest problem was Khan himself.

Let’s remember that Abrams cleverly altered the Star Trek timeline so he wouldn’t have to worry about continuity. But that alteration starts on the day of Jim Kirk’s birth. So how is it that Khan Noonien Singh has gone from an Indian (OK, Ricardo Montalban wasn’t the most convincing Sikh, but he was playing a Sikh) to a very white man? I mean, with all due respect to Benedict Cumberbatch who did the best he possibly could with a role that wasn’t particularly well-written, he doesn’t look like a man named Khan Noonien Singh.

I’ve seen some stuff on the web about the “whitewashing” of Khan, with people taking offense at turning this villain white. I actually sort of wonder if Abrams did it precisely because he was casting Khan as a terrorist and preferred not to get into the person of color being the terrorist attacking white people (for all the multi-culturalism Trek likes to espouse, the Roddenberry, Berman and Abrams versions all reflect a very white, very American Federation). What bothered me was the inconsistency.

I actually think, or maybe it’s hope, that there’s a scene on the cutting room floor that really should have been left in. Because Khan’s problems don’t stop with his sudden Anglicization. There’s also the magic blood. Khan’s blood can not only heal the dying, it can bring back the dead. So Khan is, apparently, the key to immortality. So why, in the other time line, didn’t he just bleed into the mouths or inject his blood into the veins of those of his people who died? Remember, the gross little rhino-reptile thing whose young wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex, “…killed twenty of my people, including my beloved wife.” Are we to seriously believe that this man, who dominated a huge chunk of 1990s Earth before he was eventually defeated, didn’t know all the effects of his genetic enhancement? Please.

And, if it is Khan’s genetic manipulation that gives him magic blood, why does McCoy need him to revive Kirk? He has 72 other sources of the same genetic manipulation. So, I think there’s a scene on the upcoming DVD release that will show that Marcus did some more stuff to Khan after he found him, causing, perhaps unintentionally, the blood change and changing his appearance. At least I hope so, because otherwise, this is very poorly thought out.

For the record, I don’t think even the terrible last TV series, Star Trek: Enterprise ever produced as cringe-worthy a moment as Spock yelling “KHAAAAAAAAAAN!” I like the re-imagining of Spock as a more emotional and screwed up character, having had more difficulty than we saw in the original timeline in suppressing his emotions and now being completely derailed by seeing his home world destroyed and failing to save his mother from it. But this was just silly.

Also, the climactic scene of Kirk’s death feels very forced to say the least. It was well-done, and it wrenched tears from my eyes. But the relationship between Kirk and Spock in The Wrath of Khan was very well-established. They had been close friends for years, closer than many lovers. Kirk’s loss was well established. In this film, Spock and Kirk are still getting to know each other and there is still a lot of tension between them. The depth of loss is simply put on, it’s a building with no foundation. My weepy eyes were for Kirk’s death, not for Spock’s loss. In TWOK it was for both.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a very fun film. And there’s long periods in it with nothing that seemed off. But these problems were really disjointing. The odd change in Khan that made no sense really hurts this movie as a Trek film. And as a movie in general, the weak motivation of the villains and the humongous plot holes, as well as the bizarre leaps of science (the Enterprise goes from Earth to Q’onos back to Earth in a day, despite losing a huge chunk of time to a downed warp engine…that’s just absurd) that make it seem more like magic, weaken it as a movie in general and a sci-fi movie in particular.

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/star-trek-into-darkness-a-fun-film-that-could-have-been-so-much-more/feed/3plitnickm8695748163_e2c8aa74c3_mCheapening Our Bodies, Male and Femalehttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/cheapening-our-bodies-male-and-female/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/cheapening-our-bodies-male-and-female/#commentsWed, 08 May 2013 04:36:03 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=33]]>So, apparently the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch has a really big problem with bigger people. A&F will not sell larger sizes because, as CEO Mike Jeffries tells a Business Insider reporter, “…we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”

So, not only does Jeffries want us all to believe that someone with some meat on her/his bones is unattractive, s/he is also “not cool.” Is there a clearer example of how shallow and incipid the image-driven world is?

I also found it interesting that the article that criticized this focused only on women’s sizes. I get, of course, that body image is a very serious problem among women, with the associated insecurities, eating disorders and daily judgments based on their appearance.

But guess what? A&F isn’t treating men much better. Yes, unlike women’s sizes, A&F does offer up to XL sizes for men…but check out how they define XL. Yeah, XL for men means a 36-inch waist!

Jeffries makes so many disgusting, hateful comments in his interview, it’s nauseating to even read it. Here’s just one quote, elaborating on the above: “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

It’s worth pointing out that Jeffries should perhaps avoid throwing stones. Because this is a man so ugly that one commenter on another blog compared him, unfavorably, to Eric Stoltz in “Mask.” To wit:

It’s two issues we have here. Jeffries is obviously an elitist jerk, who is working hard to promote the shallowest aspects of human culture, style over substance, despite being no beauty contest winner himself, or perhaps precisely because of that. But it’s also worth noting that men, too are affected by this sort of attitude. By no means am I suggesting that it is anywhere near the level of the effect on women, but it still matters.

My wife, who is a large and very beautiful woman (and I’m far from the only one who says so), shared an article on Facebook the other day. I liked most of it quite a bit, but I couldn’t hit the like button, as i usually do on her posts.

You see, the article was encouraging large women to be proud of their appearance, and made some really good points. But then there was this one part: “Fat chicks bang hot guys… ALL. THE. TIME.I know that hot is relative and all inclusive depending on who you chat with, but for these purposes, lets talk about the “universally attractive” kind of hot. Y’know, the kind fat chicks don’t deserve? We want to pretend that we don’t know what I’m talking about, but lets be real; we totally do. The fact that “fat chicks bang ‘hot’ guys” was one of the most powerful realizations I’ve had thus far. In line with the above paragraph, I knew that there would be someone that would find me attractive but the pool would be small (because of my body) and potentially full of guys I didn’t personally find sexy. So I would have to settle for anyone that would take me. After all, how could a conventionally gorgeous man (tall and with tattoos of course) like fat chicks? Weh-he-hell, let me tell you somethin’: through various sites, events, parties, and corner store meetings, I found myself with over a hundred men who were champing at the bit to get with this. I was the one who had to sift through and pick the hottest of the hot.”

Sigh, talk about missing the point. Look, we all find different people attractive, and I’ve never ceased to be amazed that far more women and men find me attractive than I could ever imagine, being that I, like so many of us, don’t think I am. But this does go both ways, and in any case, the issue is to stop judging people by some sort of abstract standard of appearance. How many people, of whatever gender has gotten into an abusive relationship, physical or emotional, because the other person was “hot” and they didn’t, perhaps couldn’t, look any further than that shallow mark? It’s no better, ethically or practically, for women to be sizing men up by their appearance than for men to do it to women.

Believe me, I’m not saying we can’t respond to seeing someone we think is hot. I do it all the time. Eye candy is all good, though I daresay what I think is beautiful may not be the same as you. I hope that’s the case, because that sort of diversity of taste is exactly the point. But it’s just not about how many “hot guys” or “hot gals” we can bang. It’s got to be about something more substantive. There’s nothing wrong with someone who wants sex, and wants multiple and many partners for it. But can we all please stop demanding that there is some standard of beauty that everyone must adhere to, and, while we’re at it, can we start realizing that how we look is not the be all and end all of who we are?

Jes, the woman who writes the “Militant Baker” blog I cited here, has a lot of great stuff to say, but I hope she’ll consider the implications of her one paragraph there. Jeffries, by contrast, is no doubt always going to be part of the problem, and I can only hope that people who fit his ideal body type can see how offensive his thinking is and stop buying his clothes. They’re overpriced and ugly anyway. Like the CEO.

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/cheapening-our-bodies-male-and-female/feed/2plitnickmbeauty-comes-in-all-shapesmikejeffries_ericstoltzWe Can Be Heroeshttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/we-can-be-heroes-2/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/we-can-be-heroes-2/#commentsMon, 06 May 2013 19:20:12 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=31]]>This article originally appeared in Souciant, where I maintain a weekly column. Please support our work, we depend on you.

Leftists often bemoan a perceived lack of progress on the issues they work on. Fighting economic injustice, war or discrimination can feel like a thankless task. On top of the

difficulty of the work, too often we fail to celebrate success and lose a longer historical view of how the world has changed for the better.

That’s why this week’s revelation by National Basketball Association veteran Jason Collins that he is gay is so important. Collins is the first professional player in a major US male team sport to come out while he was still active, and the media as well as most other athletes who have spoken publicly have been extremely supportive. It’s worthwhile to stop and realize that only a few short years ago the response would have been very different.

As an avid athletics fan who often listens to sports talk radio, I can say that the worst of the responses I’ve heard have been measured and usually consist of asking “why does he even have to bring it up?” That is a very long way from the open hate directed at Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) people that I’ve heard most of my life, in every social realm. Still, it’s worth examining just why it is so important that Collins came out publicly.

The fact is, statements and stances by public figures can have a strong impact on people who are struggling with their identity. It’s a terrifying way to live when you are hiding who you are and afraid of what those dear to you might think if they found out. That is an experience I know too well. And it leaves one very vulnerable to the actions, both positive and negative, of famous people who dare talk about “it.”

By the age of nine, I knew I was bisexual, even though I couldn’t articulate that idea even in my own mind. As I got older and moved into my teens, I grappled with shame, denial and an overwhelming fear of discovery. Though actively bi from the time I was 14, I didn’t tell anyone, not even friends who were gay, let alone my family, until I was 26.

One of the things that got me through those difficult times was my favorite (to this day) musician, David Bowie. I had been listening to Bowie since I was nine, and didn’t really get the whole bisexual thing about him until I was twelve or thirteen. That was, as it turned out, just when I needed it the most.

I wasn’t sexually active yet, but I always felt that my interest in guys showed, even though I could honestly display a genuine interest in girls that was just as strong. I felt like people could read my “inner queer.” My environment was split between a religious Jewish community and a lot of hormonal teenagers, some of whom liked to get drunk and talk about “going to beat up some fags,” so external pressure reinforced internalized homophobia to make me feel alone, afraid, and ashamed.

But Bowie put another feeling inside me, one of pride and a sense that this brilliant artist was just like me, at least in one way. I waited for a new album with great anticipation (even when he was in his Berlin phase and I was too young to grasp the music I would later recognize as his most brilliant work). I loved Bowie’s music before it related to my struggle to accept my sexual identity, but he later came to be the one support I felt I had for that struggle.

Then, after 1980’s Scary Monsters there came three years of nothing, very little new music, as Bowie struggled with putting his life back together after overcoming drug addiction. Finally, in 1983, Let’s Dance came out. I was 17 that year, and I waited for that record as I had the previous four. The record was a hit, probably Bowie’s most successful ever in the US. But I was bitterly disappointed. It lacked any originality or creativity. Let’s Dance was just a very well-produced pop LP. And then came the really devastating moment.

Bowie gave an interview to Rolling Stone, and the cover blared out loud: “DAVID BOWIE STRAIGHT!” Bowie told the magazine that his public declaration of bisexuality was “the biggest mistake I ever made” and “I was always a closet heterosexual.” I was devastated.

Heroes A-side (German release)

It wasn’t only Bowie. In 1983, AIDS was really making its way into the headlines and hatred of gay men was rampant. Much of the progress that had been made since the 1960s’ gay liberation movement was being reversed. The gay culture that was so open during the Decade of Disco was being forced back underground under the cloud of a devastating epidemic. Worse for me, bisexual men were seen as the “conduit” the “gay disease” was using to infect heterosexuals.

It was a tough time to be anything but straight. For the next decade, I watched as friends and, later, colleagues got ill and died. And the one thing in my life that had once made me feel positive about my sexual identity had turned its back on me, told me it was all just a publicity stunt. I had, in 1983, been considering sharing my bisexuality with some of those closest to me – my best friend, who was a lesbian, my brother, one or two others I thought might understand – but I was already terrified, and Bowie’s reversal slammed that idea deep down for almost a decade.

David Bowie continued his artistic decline through the 1980s, culminating in the perversely titled Never Let Me Down. For me, his meaning in my life had disappeared and so did his music, leaving me with only the records of the past, which, though I still loved them, now seemed like mere illusions.

In 1990, I found a book of short stories by a wonderful gay, Jewish writer named Lev Raphael. In it was a story called “Betrayed by David Bowie,” which made be weep for hours after I read it. Raphael wrote about his reaction to the Rolling Stone interview:

“I couldn’t buy the new album. I waited for Bowie to clarify, to say that he wasn’t denying his past, that this was all just some kind of intriguing retranslation of himself, like Ziggy (Stardust) or Major Tom. I wrote angry letters in my head. Bowie was more popular than ever before and his music was the least original of his career. He was claiming to be just like everyone else; forget about ‘Queen Bitch’ or wearing a dress or going down on Mick Ronson’s guitar at more than one concert, or singing about trade, ‘a butch little number,’ cruising, ‘the church of man love’ being ‘such a holy place to be,’ all of it, the obvious and the metaphorical. ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ was selling himself and everyone who’d believed in him.”

Raphael’s words mirrored my own feelings. But I also knew that Bowie didn’t owe me anything. He would manage his own life and career as he wished, and that was his right. Eventually, I found my own way to come out to those closest to me. Some of it wasn’t easy, and some reactions were very unpleasant. But mostly, I found acceptance and warmth and love.

What does this story have to do with Jason Collins? A lot. Somewhere out there, by the hundreds, are young men and women who love basketball, who are also gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. There are other gay athletes, but a man in one of the major team sports in the US has now broken that barrier and come out while he was still in the league. Some of those kids will be more able to be open about who they are now, and some who still aren’t ready to do that will find some comfort in Collins’ revelation.

And it’s important for us all to realize that 2013 isn’t 1983. About a decade ago, David Bowie, who since his comeback in the mid-90s has again produced some of the most brilliant and creative music in the world and seems (with Bowie, one can never assume what’s real, only what seems to be) to have shed his various personae and decided to just be David Bowie, revised his stated sexuality again.

In an interview with Blender, Bowie was asked if he still thought saying he was bi was “the worst mistake” he ever made.

“Interesting,” he said. “I don’t think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners or be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter and a performer, and I felt that [bisexuality] became my headline over here for so long. America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.”

I felt better, not least because I shared Bowie’s view of the US and still do. By that time I was at peace with myself, and comfortable with who I am. But more importantly, Bowie’s ever-present marketing sense reflected a changing world. The US was lagging behind and still is, but even here, times have changed and changed radically.

The response to Jason Collins is as solid proof as you’ll get. It’s a lot of hard work and difficult times, working to make the world a better place for everyone. We sometimes take a step or two backwards, but we can change the world. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again.

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/we-can-be-heroes-2/feed/1plitnickmHeroes A-side (German release)What Rape Culture Meanshttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/what-rape-culture-means/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/what-rape-culture-means/#commentsSun, 24 Mar 2013 00:51:34 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=26]]>Of you want to know why I keep pounding away on this topic, Think Progress offers just a few sample statistics to explain why this is such a problem. And the message needs to be heard by MEN, because the vast majority of rapists are men. It goes well beyond the actual act. It is about respecting women as people as much as you respect other men. Too many of us don’t do that, even if they don’t go so far as sexual assault.

Learn.

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/what-rape-culture-means/feed/1plitnickmrape_cultureMissing the Point: An Important and Unfunny Cartoonhttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/missing-the-point-an-important-and-unfunny-cartoon/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/missing-the-point-an-important-and-unfunny-cartoon/#respondSat, 23 Mar 2013 19:47:39 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=22]]>My thanks to a new follower of this blog for posting this cartoon on her own blog I do think it is important for young men and boys to stop destroying their own lives and futures by sexual assaulting another. But ultimately, they are making that choice, the victim is not, so it is not about their lives it’s about the lives they have damaged or even destroyed with their vicious act. I’ll add again, that is so whether it is a man or a woman, whether s/he is a sex worker, a gender bender, a “slut,” or any other person whom someone might think “deserves it.” This is is an inviolable right, and no one loses it for any reason. Is it really rocket science to understand that NO means NO?!

And hey, media folks! I’m a journalist too. Can any of you explain to me what possessed you to report on a horrifying act of rape through the lens of sympathizing with the rapists rather than the victim?

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/missing-the-point-an-important-and-unfunny-cartoon/feed/0plitnickmandrememberkidsalwayshavesaferapebynotpostingphotosofitontheinternetAfter Steubenville: A Male Reflection On The Horror Of Rapehttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/after-steubenville-a-male-reflection-on-the-horror-of-rape/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/after-steubenville-a-male-reflection-on-the-horror-of-rape/#respondWed, 20 Mar 2013 20:10:00 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=19]]>It is absolutely shocking to me that the girl who was raped in Steubenville, Ohio is now being subjected to threats and harassment for coming forward, as is the blogger who helped shine a national spotlight on this appalling case. It is a sad comment on how far we still have to go regarding the treatment of women in our culture. It is also a sad comment on how freely rape permeates so much of the society around us.

Photo by Toban B., Published under a Creative Commons license.

Some are blaming team sports, media, religion, or whatever they see as the root cause of rape. Yet in fact, rape is pervasive. It happens in every community. It happens to men as well as women. It is mostly perpetrated by men, but women too sometimes engage in rape. It happens among secular people as well as religious. It happens in egalitarian groups. It happens in sex-positive environments as well as sexually suppressed ones. No matter where you turn, rape happens.

Rape is often, but not always, perpetrated for the feeling of power over another. But sometimes rape happens due to a sense of entitlement, and it can even happen as an act of sex—an overly desperate person sees an opportunity with someone in a compromised position, drunk or unconscious, and takes advantage. Rape has many forms, sometimes including only verbal coercion, sometimes merely taking advantage of a person whose wits are not about them, sometimes using massive physical force. It is not as one dimensional as some would have it be, and that just makes the problem more vexing.

If the problem is so widespread, we can conclude there is no one solution to it, and that is true. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a place to start. We do. We start with men, because most rapists are men. We start with the rape of women, because they are the large majority of victims. We start with rape as an act not of sex but of violent control, because that is its most common form.

At least, I start there, because as a man, that seems to me the best place for me to work.

And I’ll share a story with you now. I was 17 years old, and had not had sex with a girl. And I was very much troubled by this fact. Not only did I have the raging hormones of a 17 year old, but I felt very inadequate for not having had this experience. I was surrounded by friends who constantly bragged of their sexual conquests. Whether they told the truth or not is debatable, of course, but I believed them. I felt there must be something terribly unattractive about myself, both physically and in my personality, to have not ever held a woman naked in my arms as we “did it.”

So, when a young woman around my age began flirting with me, I was thrilled. The woman and I spent an evening together, but neither of us had a private place to go. She said she was on a vacation from her job as a counselor upstate, and I should come back with her. They needed more counselors and we could certainly have the chance to have sex up there.

Well, I was more than eager to take her up on her offer. But once I got there, she was avoiding me. Once in a while I’d see her and she’d renew her promise. But it hadn’t happened. Finally, on the last night of camp, I almost pleaded with her to find some alone time with me. She agreed. We found a room we could lock and no one would notice, and we started making out, clothes gradually coming off. She had removed her bra, and both of us had only underwear on. My excitement was indescribable. So much so, in fact, that I wasn’t noticing that she was going through the motions without a lot of enthusiasm.

Well, just as I moved to remove her panties, she went totally limp and said, “I don’t think I want to.” After a brief exchange wherein I was rather petulant and definitely expressing feelings of hurt, disappointment and frustration, I got up, got dressed and left, slamming the door behind me.

The point of this story is probably obvious to you by now. I was a 17 year old kid with hormones bursting. I hadn’t learned all that much about feminism, and my real awakening to the plight of women all over the world was still some years away. I was, in short, a pretty normal 17 year old young man. But it never occurred to me not to take no for an answer.

I don’t think this was particularly praiseworthy on my part. It seems to me the only decent response. And I was hardly saintly about it. It’s almost 30 years ago, but I think I dropped an F-bomb on her as I left. And in my mind, I felt deceived. I thought she had planned this from the beginning to mess with me. Maybe she did, or maybe she had simply changed her mind. It doesn’t matter. No is no.

So, when I hear the phony excuses of how “she was asking for it by the way she behaved” or the way she dressed or how she walked or talked, I have no patience for it. Let’s put it clearly, guys. If a woman walks up to you, grabs you by the crotch, pulls you into a private room, strips naked and lies with her legs spread SHE STILL HAS THE RIGHT TO SAY NO AT ANY TIME!

This isn’t rocket science. If a woman teases you, and gets you all worked up only to leave you high and dry, it’s true, that’s not a very nice thing to do. But it is not a license to rape. And since these scenarios are exceedingly rare and quite extreme, it pretty well covers the other 99.999% of excuses made for why the rape was really the victim’s fault.

If a woman, or a man for that matter, is too disoriented to properly consent you may not have sex with her or him. There isn’t a lot of grey area there. Any of us who has ever had a little too much to drink (or imbibed overly much in whatever substance), or seen anyone else in that state, knows what it looks like. If she, or he, is lying there looking unhappy at what you’re doing, STOP DOING IT!

If she, or he, has to be pressured into it, it’s not ok. If sex is really what you’re after, there are people out there who will consent to having sex with you; you just have to make the effort to meet them, and win them over. If you can’t do that, you have some work to do on yourself. You can also find plenty of people who are into consensual power exchange, if that is what thrills you. Nothing wrong with that, or anything else as long as it is between two people who can consent to the act (age appropriateness being part of that as well).

OK, you say, that’s all fine and we understand it. But people get off on the power trip of rape, and, anyway, we have a culture that encourages rape. The objectification and dehumanization of women has many different forms in virtually all cultures the world over. What do we do about that?

In the 1970s, the focus was on teaching women how to avoid rape or to defend themselves. Nothing is wrong with that, to be sure, but it doesn’t get at the root causes. Those causes are what concern me, especially as the father of a young son whom I want to grow up with a positive attitude about sex but about whom I worry that he will get the wrong messages about women.

There aren’t any easy answers, but Steubenville gives us some clues. We should all be just as outraged at the townsfolk who are defending the rapists, who are threatening the victim and those who helped publicize this atrocity. The law says that consent must be given, and that merely not saying “no” is not consent (which should be obvious, especially if the victim is passed out). Despite that fact, the rapists’ lawyers tried to use the fact that the girl didn’t say no as a defense. And the victim’s friends turned on her and testified that she drank a lot and had been known to lie.

Well, in this case, that wasn’t going to fly, thanks to the idiocy of those around the rapists who blathered their bile over the internet, laughing at what was being done to this poor girl. But we all know that such tactics do work sometimes.

We need to teach our children, boys and girls, that a liar or a drunk may not be raped. We have to teach them that the behavior of a victim doesn’t matter, that it is NEVER OK to violate the body of another person.

A woman can have sex with 50 people in one night if she so desires. That doesn’t entitle anyone to be the 51st without her consent. And when a victim, male or female, comes forward, we need to stop vilifying them. Yes, there are occasions where false accusations are made, sometimes even after consensual sex. That’s why we investigate, and why we should never treat an accusation as a conviction.

But with no other crime do so many people question the veracity of the alleged victim. And that is where we need to start drawing the line. We need to send a message loud and clear that someone who is crying rape should be presumed to be telling the truth, just as we presume someone is telling the truth when they say they were robbed. When someone is saying they were sexually assaulted, there should be penalties for those who retaliate or humiliate that person for bringing the accusation. You can believe her or not, but you cannot vilify her on the presumption she, or he, is lying. That should not only be taught at every level, it should be the law.

In Steubenville, some people threatened the rape victim, and they were, in fact, arrested. But we need to go farther, and make it illegal to imply that because the victim dresses provocatively, or perhaps likes to party, or has a “bad reputation” that she, or he, must be lying. Because in most cases, the victims are not lying and every such accusation is a new assault on top of the first one. And that is how it should be treated—as an assault.

I, as someone who believes that sex and sexuality should be open and celebrated in all its diversity, am quite comfortable talking to my son about sex, about respecting all people equally, and about particularly not seeing women as sexual objects. Other people are not so sanguine about talking with or exposing their children to sex. That’s ok, but we need to agree that, even if we disapprove of sexually provocative behavior or dress, it is not an invitation to rape. I think that is a message most of us can get behind.

And, in general, this needs to stop being a “women’s issue.” In fact, it is very much a men’s issue. Most (and I stress, not all) rapists are men. WE need to take control of this issue, and WE, as men, need to communicate to our brethren that this behavior is unacceptable. Not because we are “protecting women” or some such nonsense, but simply because IT IS WRONG!

I have no illusions that rape will disappear. It will probably be a problem as long as humans are human. But we can do a lot more to make it unacceptable socially than we have. Woman have been working at it. So have a good number of men, but not enough. So, come on guys. Let’s start holding up our end. Let’s see more men be the ones blowing the whistle, being there to support victims and, most of all, stepping in to make sure that victims aren’t vilified and emotionally assaulted all over again. This should be an easy place for men and women to work together. Lots of men are already doing it.

And it’s a way to make sure that our sons don’t end up throwing their lives and futures away because somehow they got the message that it’s ok to violate a helpless girl. That’s what happened to the Steubenville kids. There are no winners there, everybody loses.

]]>https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/after-steubenville-a-male-reflection-on-the-horror-of-rape/feed/0plitnickmPhoto by Toban B., Published under a Creative Commons license.In Guns We Trusthttps://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/in-guns-we-trust/
https://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/in-guns-we-trust/#respondFri, 18 Jan 2013 21:53:53 +0000http://mynareshkeit.wordpress.com/?p=17]]>This article originally appeared at Souciant, where I have a weekly column

The United States is the only country where owning a gun is considered a God-given right. For some, perhaps, it is merely held to be a constitutional right (in this, it stands with only three other countries: Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico.) But whatever level of divinity is bestowed upon it, the gun is American culture’s Golden Calf.

After the horrifying shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty children, along with six adults, were repeatedly shot dead, half the country demanded limitations on the availability of guns, especially semi-automatic weaponry.

The other half, incredibly, argued that guns were not the problem and, in a refrain that was far too common, suggested that if the teachers were armed, the killer would have been stopped. The vociferousness with which this proposal was put forward, was astonishing, considering the bloodshed. Support came from a variety of establishment quarters, and included numerous and prominent Republican officials.

Unfortunately, firearms advocates have constitutional backing, which plays no small part in undergirding our country’s culture of violence. The US Constitution was a groundbreaking document in its day, even if it has been improved upon in other countries since. However, the Second Amendment to that Constitution, which grants Americans the right to own guns, was a masterpiece of vagueness that has left a bloody legacy behind it.

Throughout American history, the wording of that amendment has been debated, with some arguing that it grants every individual citizen the right to a gun. Others argued that the text — “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” — only meant that States had the right to arm authorized citizens in their service, so that the federal government did not have a monopoly on firearms. That debate, however, was severely tilted in 2008, when the US Supreme Court declared, for the first time, that indeed it was an individual right. That made the battle to control the guns a lot harder.

But this goes far beyond handguns. Gun fanatics always want bigger and more powerful weapons, equivalent, at least in firepower, to those carried by American soldiers. It’s a frequently misunderstood desire, but one which creates enormous obstacles to controlling the abuse of firearms. Hence, President Barack Obama faces a major battle in Congress over many aspects of his new gun control plan, which includes a measure to restore a ban on private citizens owning military-grade assault rifles, such as AK-47s, and the M4s common to US ground troops.

Does this issue matter for people outside the borders of the United States? You bet. The United States is far and away the leader in selling weapons around the world. In 2011, US exports accounted for 78% of the global arms trade. For perspective, Russia was second at 5.6%. And it’s not just military equipment sold to foreign countries. The US is also the clear leader in small arms exports, including sales by private companies of handguns and other weapons intended for purchase by civilians. We export our gun culture throughout the world. Indeed, the frequent preference by many in Washington for military rather than diplomatic solutions comes from the same sort of thinking.

Guns have a special place in American history. For many, the root of their firearms passion goes back to their view of the country’s founders, who they believe wanted to ensure that the citizenry remained armed. Certainly, many of those founders did fear the consequences they saw in a disarmed populace. The experience of fighting the much better-armed British army, and the fear of a federal government turning to tyranny, was certainly a driving force for some of them. There was also the fact that many of them were very worried that a disarmed citizenry would lead to slave revolts, while others fretted about how settlers would defend themselves from the indigenous Native American population they were in the process of wiping out.

That was only the beginning of a racist basis for gun ownership. While it would be grossly unfair to say that all gun zealots are motivated by “fear of the Black Man,” it cannot be ignored that white supremacists remain an enthusiastic part of US gun culture, nor that there remains an iconic image of the African-American male as threat to white people, necessitating that they arm themselves. Not surprisingly, while white Americans favor tighter gun control by a 51%-42% margin, among African Americans, that margin swells to 68%-24%.

However, the argument over what the country’s founders might have wanted is a silly one. They lived in a vastly different world than 21st century America. What they would have thought about the sort of weapons that are easily available today is an unanswerable question. Moreover, the notion of an armed citizenry being a buffer against a government that will always be vastly better armed is absurd, yet, unfortunately, all too common.

In the years following independence, the US government was easily able to put down rebellions with overwhelming force, and today even more so. The inevitable end result of an armed standoff with the feds has been demonstrated over and over, with the government always victorious. The arming of those opposing the US government has generally meant that, unless they lay down their arms, they end up dead instead of in prison.See here for the results of such events at Waco, Texas and here for the Ruby Ridge fiasco, where a religious cult, and a white supremacist, respectively, tried to use guns to fight off federal security forces.

But the same thinking takes on a xenophobic aspect when it seeps into a survivalist mentality in the event of a foreign invasion of the United States. Once again, imagine a force capable of launching a major land invasion of the US. Will commercial weapons, even a roomful of them, offer protection for a family or a small community in the face of foreign combat troops? The notion is preposterous, yet it has a powerful hold on many Americans. To wit, many train, as private militiamen, for such an eventuality, using hunting rifles, bows and arrows, and the like.

So unless one wants to argue that private citizens should be permitted to purchase any weaponry, including fighter jets, land mines, and even nuclear weapons, the notion of defending against an army with private armaments is an obvious non-starter. Historically, the sort of guerrilla warfare that does work in such circumstances has not required the free availability of arms. Someone is always willing to arm such groups when they deem it beneficial to their interests.

Firearms advocates also frequently argue that guns prevent crime. It is for this reason, that many Americans are insistent on their right to own weaponry. No doubt, there are times that a person having a gun prevents a violent crime. But the belief that this is a reasonable defense, albeit a necessity, is based on a myth. That myth has always been rooted in popular culture. For example, you can’t turn on an American television show, or watch a feature film, where a gun is not seen, or brandished in self-defense. In real life, this is a rare event, but a 1995 study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz claimed that about 2.5 million such crimes were prevented or thwarted by armed citizens annually.

The claim is an obvious lie even before you really examine it. In 1993, the year Kleck and Gertz studied, there were about 260 million people in the US, about one-fifth of them children. Thus, at that rate, very few adults would not have defended themselves against a crime, with a gun, or know someone who did. The study was widely debunked, but for America’s gun lobby, it remains received truth.

This sort of academic dishonesty, coupled with a culture that, both from our history and our media are inundated with the virtues of firearms, is what gives the country’s preeminent firearms advocacy organization, the National Rifle Association (NRA) its power. The NRA is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the country, a group that can make or break politicians just like the vaunted Israel advocacy organization, AIPAC. Taking them on is no easy task, despite a well-established gun control lobby, which works hard to counter that influence.

The NRA was once an organization that worked for responsible ownership and use of guns. They once believed that guns should be sold only to those who could demonstrate need and worthiness of being trusted to wield the. Those days are long gone. The NRA now advocates virtually unlimited access to firearms for individual citizens. And they have the power in Washington to pursue these ideas.

It’s not just homicide, but also suicide that is enabled by the easy availability of handguns. In 2009, gunsaccounted for more than half of all suicides in the US, more than twice as many as any other method. Americans don’t simply choose another method if the guns aren’t there. For example, when the Israeli military stopped allowing soldiers to take their guns home with them after they finished their mandatory service, suicide rates plunged. It makes a difference.

Despite a mounting number of incidents, of unstable individuals going on killing sprees, (does anybody remember Aurora?) President Obama is still going to have a tough time getting his gun control measures passed. Unfortunately, when they do become law, these measures will be watered down, and at risk for nullification by the US Supreme Court. How real is this danger? Consider the words of Justice Antonin Scalia: “Obviously the (Second) Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.”

If individual ownership of rocket launchers can pass the laugh test, how can we expect this man, who may be the most rightwing Supreme Court justice, to consider a mere semi-automatic rifle to be beyond the pale? Scalia’s troubled worldview epitomizes how deeply pro-firearm ownership sentiment penetrates America’s judicial establishment. Such opinions ought to have no place on the bench, particularly that of a country’s top judiciary. It is a testimony to how difficult it is to initiate any reformist endeavors, such as that currently being undertaken by the White House.

In this light, it is also important to remember that guns are far from the only factor informing the violent mentality of Americans. Government neglect of mental healthcare, for example, is a big part of why so many shooting incidents are occurring, as is of course, our continually crisis-ridden economy. Might they have anything to do with class? Why so few political analysts cite social factors, in explaining the rise in gun violence, is of course telling. This is why the issue cannot be solved simply through legislation. But part of changing this situation is changing the law, and changing the law means making guns less available. I can’t think of a better place to start.